The Mayfield High School Science Olympiad Team is short on event coaches, and it may hurt their performance in competitions.

Science Olympiad is an annual science competition in which students compete in many different science and engineering related events, attempting to win their team a spot in the regional, state, and national competitions.

Mayfield’s team, however, has a problem: they don’t have enough event coaches. Corey Rice, one of the administrators of the Science Olympiad team and a coach of multiple events, said, “We are short on event coaches: 23 events and we have less than 23 event coaches…some people get really stressed coaching multiple events.”

Not having enough coaches means that many of the existing coaches have to coach several events, which puts stress on them and the students they coach. Most of Mayfield’s event coaches are parents of students on the team.

The team is actively searching for more coaches, especially among parents of the students. Rice said “Every year we reach out to our students and ask them to find parents that are willing to help.” The team mainly looks for coaches in parents, but has also reached out to people at Case Western Reserve University and even Mayfield alumni.

According to sophomore Jacob Baraz, a very active 5 year member of the science Olympiad team, not having enough coaches also “makes [Science Olympiad] harder to organize.” A Science Olympiad event coach’s main job is to organize practices and meetings for the team. When that responsibility is put on students, it is less likely that a meeting will be held and that everyone will show up.

Even when meetings happen, without a coach the team will “start off on topic, but it is easy to get off track without a coach,” said sophomore Andrew Whiteman who has participated in science Olympiad since seventh grade and currently participates in the air trajectory and experimental design events. This can reduce the productivity of the team, and it hurts their performance.

The lack of event coaches also makes Science Olympiad harder and more work for students, as they “have to host and do all the studying and planning themselves,” said Whiteman. Having to take care of all the administrative processes takes student’s time and energy away from actually working on the events. This is detrimental to their performance in the Science Olympiad competition.

Despite all these issues, Rice believes that the students are coping well with the problem. “Our students have really stepped it up and some of the older ones have taken up leadership roles,” he said. The students of Science Olympiad have managed to do well even without enough coaches for all their events. They even qualified for states last year, despite having the same problem then.

In building events the team must build a contraption to accomplish a specific goal. According to Baraz, a lack of coaches effects these events most of all. He said “you especially need a coach for the building events, someone who can help out and knows the stuff”.

According to Whiteman, although a lack of event coaches hurts the team, some good still comes out of it. “It has affected the team by making students themselves rise to the occasion…which is not necessarily a bad thing,” he said. Having to organize some events by themselves allows the students to develop valuable leadership skills.